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The Edibility of 
Animdwl Spleens 




By 

EDWARD T. WILLIAMS. M.D. 

of "Boston, Mass. 



Reprinted from 
AMERICAN MEDICINE 

Vol. XI, No. 6, page 215, 
February 10, 1906. 




Gin 
Author 
(Person) 

7Mr'06 



fHeprinted from American Medicine, Vol. XI. No. 6, page 215 
February 10, 190fi.l 



THE EDIBILITY OF ANIMAL SPLEENS. 

BY 

EDWARD T. WILLIAMS, M.D., 
of Boston, Mass. 

In the course of my investigations on animal spleens, 
the question naturally came to mind why these organs 
are never eaten. I knew as a fact that they are greedily 
devoured by butchers' dogs, and found myself asking 
whether the natural carnivorous instinct might not be a 
surer guide in the matter than human prejudice. So I 
tried a piece raw, and found it had much the taste of a 
scrap of raw beef. I then roasted a piece on a fork over 
hot coals, and ate it with a grain of salt. I found it 
capital. I then broiled a whole spleen on a gridiron 
like a steak and made a meal of it. It has about the 
consistency of liver when cooked, but is decidedly more 
agreeable in flavor. I found hog spleens richer and 
more palatable than beef spleens. I then tried them in 
the form of a stew or soup, or hashed up after broiling and 
served on toast. I found this the best dish of all when 
properly seasoned, and worked it on my friends under 
the name of a ''S-Umis Hsematique." We found it a 
most hearty food, and always followed by a peculiarly 
bracing effect on the nerves, which I attribute to its 
richness in iron and phosphorus. Chemic analysis 
demonstrates that it contains f gr. iron and U gr. phos- 
phorus per ounce. These experiments fully satisfied me 
that the spleens of hogs and cattle were a rich and 
wholesome food, possessed of valuable hematinic prop- 
erties, and ought to be generally eaten. 

Why, then, had they never been used as food ? The 
reason was furnished by my experiments. 






Spleens, as they come from the animal, have a soft 
and pulpy consistency. They may be squeezed by hand 
into a bloody mush, as one might squeeze a handful of 
currants. This leaves the hand stained and bloody. I 
tried one on a dog, which was ravenously eaten, though 
it fouled and reddened his mouth in a way that was dis- 
agreeably suggestive. The application of heat, how- 
ever, by the coagulation of their free albumin, gives 
them a consistency to be cut, chewed, and eaten like 
ordinary meat. By this means their natural repulsive- 
ness is entirely done away with. 

I find they must be eaten perfectly fresh. Their 
softness and the great number of blood-corpuscles in the 
pulp renders them peculiarly prone to decomposition. 
They must be eaten within six or eight hours after 
slaughtering at the furthest. I find it impossible to 
keep them over night even on ice. They are always 
found stale and sour in the morning and only fit for 
garbage. When cooked, however, they keep better. 

Their softness and the necessity of eating them quite 
fresh shows why they cannot be handled and sold by 
the butchers like ordinary meat. They are in their 
natural state unmarketable. They can only be obtained 
at the slaughter-houses, which involves trouble and ex- 
pense. To obviate this difficulty I have experimented 
largely with different methods of curing them while 
fresh and thus rendering them capable of permanent 
preservation. This subject I shall return to at a later 
date. 

The number of spleens available for food purposes is 
almost without limit. A rough estimate based on the 
United States Census Reports reveals the fact that there 
are upward of 50,000,000 pounds of edible spleens thrown 
away yearly in the United States. This includes the 
spleens of cattle, hogs, and sheep. An ox spleen weighs 
upward of 2 pounds, a hog's spleen about 1 pound, a 
sheep's spleen 4 ounces, on the average. It is easy to see 
what an enormous amount of good food is thus wasted 



3 

every year. The commercial value of these spleens 
reckoned at 10 cents per pound would be about $5,000,000 
per annum. 

To be safely eaten they must, of course, be perfectly 
healthy. It is well known that the spleen is subject to 
various diseases. For instance, all infectious diseases 
are liable to affect the spleen. This is seen in tubercu- 
losis, charbon, hog cholera, Texas fever, and other dis- 
eases of the same group. The animal parasite of Texas 
fever has a special tendency to affect the spleen and 
leave it permanently diseased, as in human ague, so that 
it would be wise to exclude the spleens of Southern 
cattle altogether. The government inspections already 
throw out all diseased carcasses, beside which, a personal 
inspection of every spleen handled by a competent ex- 
pert would be strictly necessary. Tuberculosis, now 
growing painfully prevalent in allour domestic animals, 
is the one disease to be especially guarded against. For- 
tunately, the detection of a tuberculous spleen is easy. 

This is a subject of vast import, medically as well as 
economically. The chemic composition of the animal 
spleen, coupled with its physiologic function as a blood 
maker, plainly indicates its value as a food for persons 
affected with impoverished blood. The ineflBcacy of mere 
medicinal agents in chronic diseases has always been rec- 
ognized. " Diseases which are caused by depletion," says 
Hippocrates quaintly, "must be cured by repletion." 
Tonics and stimulants are well so far as they go, but to 
build up the system properly an ample supply of whole- 
some and nourishing food is a sine qua non. The spleen 
contains every element necessary to make healthy blood, 
albumin, iron, phosphorus, and mineral salts, all in 
natural organic combination and in the most digestible 
form. To my mind, the whole problem of iron and 
phosphorus medication is destined to find its solution in 
the general adoption of animal spleens as a blood- 
making food. 

"I find myself," said Emerson, "harping on a few 



strings." Perhaps I am harping too much on the 
dietetic value of animal spleens ; yet something tells me 
I ought not to stop till I have succeeded in convincing 
people of their usefulness. 

125 Dudley street, Roxbury, Boston, Mass. 



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